


The Other Citadel

by cypherd



Category: Rick and Morty, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, HorrorTale Sans, M/M, Multi, Underfell Sans, Underswap Papyrus, lots of language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-04-27 20:06:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14433117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cypherd/pseuds/cypherd
Summary: It was only a matter of time before Rick Sanchez, arguably the smartest HUMAN in all the Universe uncovered another race who had a multitude of versions of one of their own, all or most equally capable of universe hopping. All equally failed in perfecting the one branch of Science he could not....the sensible thing to do is offer them some form of amnesty, correct?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been fiddling with this for a while, I think it's a very 'Tales from the Citadel' thing with a faint, overarching plot line.

“Boy, Grandpa Rick, I’ve never been to this part of the Citadel this time of night.” Palette-Swap Morty trotted behind his Rick as the the duo meandered down the outskirts of the hub of the town, Morty himself pausing every few steps to allow his grandfather’s drunken stagger to catch up, taking the downtime to peer out of the dome’s windows into the cosmos, standing aside a little to avoid the admittedly impressive view being obscured by the drifting, bloated corpse of some Rick, likely a worker fallen victim to the harsh working conditions of deep space

.  
His Rick let out a belch and came, or more accurately caught himself mid stagger to stand (relatively speaking) alongside his Morty. “Yeah, and fucking Dangerous Morty. I mean…We—urp, could fucking die any moment…Uhhhh, you know, just….meteor…crashes…crashes into the side here and we get suuuuc—cked out int…into Space, Morty. Deep Space!”

“But wasn’t this dome built by Ricks? Shouldn’t it be…fail proof?“

  
Something of the tone cut through Palette Swap Rick’s inebriation but he was spared the requirement for a witty rejoinder as Morty’s attention was drawn to movement close by.

  
"H…Hey, A UFO.”

  
“Not a UFO Morty.” Rick pointed out and down.

  
Morty followed the direction of Rick’s hand.

  
“Gee Rick, I never noticed that before…What….Who lives down there?”

“Huh?”

  
“I mean, what kind of Ricks and Morties? Farmers? I bet it’s the farmer complex. That’s kind of in the right direction, right?”

  
"Oh that? That’s not Ricks and Morties. That’s not even Part of the Citadel. That’s our Sister Citadel.”

  
“We have a sister citadel?” Morty was forced to start pursuing his Rick again, who had apparently grown bored with the view, or, more accurately, given that his stagger had just recently gotten exaggerated to overtly sloppy levels and Morty had seen his Grandfather’s various stages of inebriation enough to know when he was faking to avoid something.

  
“Really, come on Rick, how bad can it be to tell me what kind of aliens live there? I-I-I mean what? Are they…brain eaters? Rapist culture colony? Some sort of group that performs ritualistic sacrifices involving the penis or testicles? The clitoris?”

  
Rick managed an impressively drawn out belch that sounded a lot like ‘Yeah, as if you could find the clitoris with a road map’ and apparently decided to reconsider the information embargo.

  
“None of that. They’re not even Aliens…Try MONSTERS! Yeah! Suck on that knowledge bi-yotch!“

  
"M-Monsters?”

  
“Yeah, yeah, god Morty, just because you’ve got the brain the size of a fucking walnut that’s ah, probably located in your ass, doesn’t mean there aint’ fuckin’ ….other…other races that got the whole interdimensional thing figured out.”

  
“They have…portal guns?”

  
“No, shit, what do you think this is a video game? But uh, actually yes, they are from…from a videogame.”

  
“Videogames are real?”

  
“NO, Morty, Obviously not, that’s fucking stupid,. I mean that their reality is like a videogame in….uh, our reality.”

  
“I really don’t see how that’s any different, Rick, Geez.”

  
“Of course you fuc—uurp…king don’t. Brain the size of a walnut, don’t think about it. Annnyway, bunch of…too…too lazy morons…the lot of them. The Council gives them amnesty becauuuuse they’re not exactly going to be getting up off their non-existent asses to be steaaaling our technology anytime soon.”

“Non-existent ass—”

  
“AHHHHH SNAPS…CAUSE THEY’RE ALL SKELETONS MORTY! PLOT TWIST!”

  
“WHAT THE HELL, RICK? I mean…they’re people without skin? A universe of people without skin?”

  
Rick predictably made a spectacular show of ignoring his grandson’s obvious curiosity. “Now come on. We’re going on a good, Old-fashioned Rick and Morty adventure…”  
“Seriously Rick, why can’t we visit? Don’t I get every 10th Adventure?”  
“Cause this isn’t our narrative Morty. Geez. We got our own dark ass season to be finishing. You see me eating any fucking Mulan Promotional Szechuan sauce right now?”

  
“I thought that was…”

  
“TOP PRIORITY MORTY!” As almost an afterthought he turned to give the apparently monster-skeleton inhabited citadel a backwards glance. “Pft, lucky bastards. Like ketchup is so hard to find.”

  
Palette swap morty followed his Rick into a portal, resigned to the fact that that he would never know anything more about the sister citadel and its inhabitants; something that turned out to be extremely accurate given that they were disemboweled not a second later by a large guardian of a particularly useful species of plant in the middle of a simulation world they’d accessed by mistake by dint of being palette swaps.

“Ah so that’s what happens if you make that mistake on that world.”

  
“What the hell Rick?”

  
“Palette swaps Morty. The actual fuck, haven’t you ever watched a video game commercial? Th…that’s like all they exist for Morty, geez. To spoil the audience on game play and misdirect at least enough that the fucking real plot’s still a big shocker.”

  
The shuttle continued uninterrupted to the sister citadel.

 

* * *

 

"Hey Red?"

The hulking figure that was slumped in the crewman's seat of the back of the ship looked up at his coworker with a grunt.

"Don't call me that."

"Fine. Thirteen." "

"Or that."

"Fine. Red Thirteen."

The skeleton looked up with real irritation this time, but the grimace was relaxed when he saw his fellow shaking his head."

"Yeah, naw, I hear ya. That just doesn't sound right at all. But what do you want, buddy, We're all sa -- oh, oh wait. Wait this is gonna be good."

The shorter of the pair stretched up an ancient but functional mobile phone and clicked a button, just on time for the speaker to crackle to life. The cabin was filled with a musical voice that could only be described as androgynous. "Tra-la-la, SS Jar of Farts you are cleared for landing..." there was a pause. "La la fuck my life...oh shit the microphone was still on...."

The back exploded in a raucous explosion of laughter, intensifying as the last frustrated words were played back on a loop.

"So This? This is my new ringtone."

"Jar of Farts...." snickered the one dubbed 'Red' whether he liked it or not, apparent ire at the nickname forgotten in the face of hilarity. “I dig it.”

"Ship's gotta have a name." Then with a sidelong glance, "It was Cap's idea."

"Wha--?"

"The second shot finger guns at Red with a laugh. "Gotchya. Course I did it. "

"Well at least there was something to make this trip worthwhile." Red's sour mood had returned. "All this mess for one pickup? Who is this clown anyway? You'd think he was Mettaton by the way we were being debriefed ."

"You're NOT taking this seriously? You're not one of those lazier-than-thou Sanses are you?"

Red snorted. "Hah, I'm Fell. You think I'd be alive if I was? If it weren't the freakin' human, then it'd be Boss. Fuck Sans..."

"AB31." the coworker shorter crewman corrected mildly.

"Fuckin--you're Sans, I'm Sans..."

"Yeah yeah we're all Sans. I don't really care about being called a number. I like bein' a bit unique in some way."

"Ugh." groused Red. "Fine Abie." then."

"Yeah. S'cool. So really. You're not even a little curious?" Abie pocketed his cellphone and went in to peer into the passenger side.

The skeleton hadn't moved from the position that they'd left him in at the start of the journey, well over an hour ago. As Abie watched, he shifted ever so slightly to shuffle the papers in his hands and then returned to relative quiet.

Red shrugged and gestured to himself again. “To repeat m’self again: I'm Fell buddy. I don't care about it. I came here wi’ Boss, we do well for ourselves, I ain't interested in a little brother who ain't even able to get himself in th' guard. Or one of those weird Swap guys...like they know what hardship is in that candyass universe. So naw, pal, I could give two shits about this fucker."

"You really don't know, do ya, buddy?" Abie turned his back on the passenger door to lean against it.

"Whaddya think he's got in his hands?"

"Dunno, dun’ care." Red sighed, patience wearing thin. “Bureaucratic shit 'm guessin'."

Abies smirked a bit, though it seemed oddly strained.

"I'm guessin' I'm yer about to tell me that ain't it." Red rumbled, curiosity peaked the slightest in spite of himself.

Abie chanced another glance into the adjacent cabin. "Mm. Ya notice anything a bit...off about this Papyrus? Seems a little...quiet to ya per’aps?"

Red heaved himself up and stumped over to the window, shouldering Abie out of the way. "Huh, yeah, guess so now ya mention it. Ugh, he doesn't come from one of those universes where his brother fucks him to sleep every night does he? Cause man, even I think that's..."

Abie declined to comment on that and settled for shaking his head, digging around in his pockets to produce a rather crumpled requisition form. "There." he jabbed a phalange at a box near the top, next to the words ‘Universe Designation.’

"UT06091984" Red mouthed. "Classic...Paps. Huh. I guess that IS a bit of a rarity. Still, nothing to write home about, even if you could around here"

"You sure you're a Sans?" Abie huffed. "Do I gotta spell it out for you bro? There's a Papyrus in our Cargo Bay. Alone. Subdued. And those papers e’ got, aight, they ain't for the embassy. That’s a s u i c i d e n o t e."

Finally Red was giving his full undivided attention. "Holy. Shit."

“Stars, Abie...What do you even do with something like that? What ARE they going to do with something like that?"

"Don't fuckin' rightly know brosef, but one thing's for certain. They're gonna eat that poor bastard alive. Mostly figuratively speaking."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some Sanses discuss the merits of a Third Option, a Papyrus weighs in and our refugee finds himself learning a few of the rules.

“‘selfish ’s what it is.” .

“dunno buddy.  it was a risk an’ it paid off. 'sides, I don’t see it as any more selfish than same reasons why any of the rest of us are all stuck here.”

A tall figure clicked his teeth together and raised a hand to signal his right to an interjection despite the timbre of his voice and obvious comparative height. "Have we given any thought to the Ricks’ proposal?”

The problem being referred to largely was the fundamental difference between the council of Ricks and the Sanses. Morties were by and large replaceable commodities; the vast majority of whom had zero autonomy. Happened to lose your Morty? Go to the reassignment center, pick up your new Morty. Rinse and Repeat as required.

Having gone through extensive amounts of time-loops before the possibility of being ejected to the Citadel had become an option on the radar, the majority of Sanses still viewed Papyrus-variants as irreplaceable and, more importantly far more autonomous. 

“He might not even want to stay.”

Sensing that they were getting off topic, the first Sans spoke up. “I think we’re all in agreement though that he needs to do some time at a sanatorium.”

“One of the swap ones? Asgore gets along better with ‘em and he knows who he is already and all…” 

“Maybe…but then what? Send him on his way? To where, exactly? What if he wants to go back to something that isn’t there? Or rescue his friends? That’s gonna be a shit show no amount of psychotherapy’s gonna undo. He’ll blame himself!”

“I don’t see it as that way at all. Papyrus is safe, everyone else got a fair chance to get outta there. If they chose to stay, s'not his problem.“

"Yeah it all seems real noble until ya remember that who says the kid wasn’t gonna finish the run and then reset?”

“Bro, look at the world’s readings if ya didn’t already. They were gonna make the last one  genocide. Pattern checks out. That’s the reason why we’re all here. Again. Gonna tell you. Our buddy took a stab in the dark and it worked.”

There was a smattering of intermittent dark snickering at the choice of words among the more grim of the party.

“Alright, here’s another idea. We now know someone took a third option. Someone else is bound to repeat the attempt.”

The words were barely out of the Sans’ mouth before the wrath of every other Sans in the place came down on him like a rain of fury.

“And what do you think got us all here in the first place?”

“Fine. Fine. Stupid idea.”

 

Despite being somewhere in the middle of the table and the tallest monster in the room,  The Skeleton 's presence seemed to go unnoticed as the argument amongst the others mounted into a rare escalation. 

 

The door clicked shut behind Stretch, or Papyrus US-55343. He preferred the nickname even if it was more or less begotten because his usual company tended to dole them out, whether you wanted one or not. He was a Papyrus after all; it was in his nature to want to feel a little unique.  He sat down on a bench and stuck his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie, spreading the various oral fixation aids within out in the folds of his oversized jumper. His hand hovered over the package of cigarettes momentarily, but although his gaze flashed briefly up to the security camera, (getting caught smoking inside here was barely on his radar, it was just a force of habit) he opted for a lolly instead. It happened to be laced with a particular herbal additive, and due to the nature of the conversation inside the council room, Stretch was looking to dull his senses a bit. 

He popped the grape flavoured candy in between his teeth. Grape drowned out the taste of everything, he'd been told, but it didn't quite completely mask the earthy taste of weed.

He was nmbed to it, but he knew this because his own brother had once come to is room hoping to nab some candy from his stash and had ultimately upon tasting it, decided the sweets had gone off and disposed of (hundreds of GP worth of) them before they could make Papyrus 'sick'. 

It was a day Papyrus thought of when he missed his brother the most. It never really worked. Probably because the very same question was on everyone’s mind - whether or not they were on the council. But then, if the Ricks and the Sanses...and him...and whomever else came down the line in the future, if all of them managed to aid the Ricks in their time travel experimentations successfully, what would happen then?

Sometimes he tried to imagine how that would go with Sans. "Hey bro, so I’m me from the future. And there's multiple dimensions. And guess what else. There is ALWAYS one where people eat shit. Always." 

And Sans would have laughed because as much as he'd try to convince you he was a serious academic, working with Captain Alphys to mechanize the Royal Guard and find ways to weaponize Determination so that Monsters would have a greater chance of survival and all that nonsense that Papyrus could barely find it in him to get on board with outside of encouraging comments, in spite of all that, he'd still be unable to entirely hide his amusement at gross-out humour.

Sometimes he could stop there...but most of the time his mind continued on with the more realistic version. 

"Hey Little bro, guess what? There's another Universe out there where everything's inverted to ours. But hey, no big, you're still the popular one in the Royal Guard with lots of friends. And their monarch made the intelligent choice in leaving the one who had a desire to band the people together in charge instead of banishing them...not to mention their guard is actually functional instead of a hodgepodge of half formulated science." 

...thrown together by a bunch of idea men, he didn't add 'aloud', not even in his imagined conversation. He loved his bro, he was a brilliant theoretical physicist, but the operative word was 'theoretical' here.  

"...and in THAT universe, everyone thinks everyone in OURS pukes sunshine and craps rainbows, cause apparently our soulless ghost freak has the weaker will so we don’t get as many genocide runs. Whoopdiefucking fuck, cause that’s what’s important here."

And by that point in the story, his head was so jumbled up between outrage, jealousy and the overall injustice of it all that could you blame him for lighting up to calm the hell down? Whatever you might say about a vice like that, the reason he turned to it at all gave him all the answer he needed to know about the TRUE outcome of that conversation and why he was at the end of it all glad beyond belief he'd probably never have to have it.

He got worked up. He was, after all an incarnation of Papyrus. 

Behind the door he'd just vacated were at least twenty different examples of what knowing what he did would do to Sans; and they were discussing one whose life that knowledge had finally actually taken.    
  


***

Papyrus, or PapyrusUT06091984 as he now must be called, found himself genuinely startled as the door to his compartment slid open. He had been so intensely focussed on rereading the note as many times as he could that he'd barely even noticed the motion of the craft as it came to a stop. 

"Okay kid. Let's go."  Both his 'guards' looked remarkably like his brother, or at least the one did. Almost a near match in height, even dressed the same but with a shock of fluff on the hoodie and a pair of beat up trainers instead of pink slippers the only things serving by barely a margin to make the already disconcerting similarities tolerable. The other was too wide to be Sans, a  taller and with a bulk that suggested power instead of bad eating habits and very late nights at Grillby’s. One of his teeth had been replaced with a sharp fake gold incisor that looked as though whomever had installed it had installed it wrong on purpose, as if it was to hurt. It had to hurt.

"Take a picture. It'll last longer." 

Papyrus jumped, unaware he'd been staring. He felt like he should apologize, but though the words and the questions wanted to come, they got stuck right behind his teeth, like glue sticking his jaw together.

"This way..."

The smaller of the two, the one who looked like his brother was far more polite, yet there was consistently something in the way he looked at Papyrus that made him instinctively want to turn and walk in the opposite direction completely. As the option wasn’t available, he put all his energy into not getting too close to either of his escorts, which kept his attention reasonably occupied all the way down the weird tunnel like hall.

“Tra-la-la, Tickets and Portal Gun please.” 

There was a stab of aching familiarity again as they saw the hooded figure - but not his Riverperson, that was for sure - a sensation Papyrus was rapidly coming to dislike immensely. 

The taller of his guards produced an odd sort of device with a flashing sickly green light on top, which the Riverperson-lookalike inserted into a terminal. Things flashed and beeped, a myriad of noise that meant nothing at all to Papyrus but seemed to satisfy everyone else, as they kept the device and waved the lot of them on ahead.

There was a bright light at the end of the tunnel. It sparked another faded memory in Papyrus that he couldn’t place and certainly didn’t have time, as the lot of them burst into a deluge of white light and noise and Papyrus who had never backed down from anything in his life took a step back.

“Good Morning Ebie. May I have the applicant’s papers please?”

“C’mon kiddo. Hand ‘em over. Just for a second here.” 

Papyrus took another step back. The barest expression of frustration washed over...Ebie, was it’s? The other skeleton’s face. God he looked like Sans, but that was an expression he hadn’t seen in many, many years, when his brother had been the taller of them and Papyrus had been particularly adamant or stubborn about something. 

“F...Fine.” Papyrus found his voice and the new sensation of something burning deep within his soul at the idea of parting with them, if, as promised only temporarily. 

“He’ll have to get that scarf checked out. Armor’s...yep, just fine.”

Everything was being processed that much slower. He started to ask what was meant; a spark of almost comforting frustration welling up at being discussed like he wasn’t even there, but it got extinguished immediately when he realized had totally missed the enormous sign on the wall, in big, glaring easy to read block letters no less.

 

WELCOME TO THE SISTER CITADEL - FAILED TIMELINE DIVISION

Please Have Paperwork and Portal Guns For Inspection.

NO HUMAN ITEMS. THIS INCLUDES CLOTHING, JEWELRY, BOOKS AND ANYTHING OF A NON-MAGICAL NATURE. VALIDITY WILL BE DETERMINED ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS. THIS MEANS A DECISION WILL BE MADE. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SOUL ASPECT. YOU WOULD THINK WE WOULDN’T HAVE TO DEFINE THAT BUT WE DO.  
  
NO HUMAN FOOD - THIS INCLUDES SPAGHETTI, TACOS, LASAGNA...FOR A COMPLETE LIST REFER TO FORM X-8-113 DIVISION OF COMESTIBLES. THAT MEANS FOOD. THAT MEANS YOU EAT IT.  
  
NO HUMANS. ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS*

Papyrus did not know what Tacos or Lasagna were, but he was not giving up his copy of Fluffy Bunny or his copy of Hamlet by Cliff Note, possibly the greatest author of all time. Or anything his brother had given him. He relaxed marginally when he at least came to realize that his Battle Body had been made by Sans out of Underground materials. They’d done it together. It was definitely on the ‘safe’ list. 

Apparently however Humans were definitely not allowed here. Maybe they had a Royal Guard? A really good one apparently. With lots of rules? He inwardly groaned. How could he even be thinking about that? Undyne...and everyone...why was HE here? 

Papyrus was a lot of things but Disloyal he was absolutely not. Even if they gave him the CAPTAINCY, he wouldn’t dare…

...there was more to the sign.

*VIOLATORS WILL BE FED TO THE FERAL HORROR SANSES.

He blinked. Surely he had read that incorrectly.

“Alright, Ebie. Take him on through.” 

The hand-like monster bowed their knuckles at Papyrus. “It’ll be okay hon. Here you are.” 

She was giving him his letter back. He took it and let himself be lead through to the next room, the weird sign almost but not quite gone from his mind. 

  
  



End file.
